Paul the Pharisee

He started the Hellenistic (Greek influence) gentile church; he started from a Jewish theological starting point. His Hebrew name was Saul, Paul is the Greek name. He was born 4 or 5 C.E. to a wealthy Jewish family of the tribe of Benjamin, and studied under Gamaliel, the grandson of Hillel, to become a Pharisee. His hometown was Tarsus in Cilicia (present-day Turkey). But he does not mention Tarsus in any of his letters, for he was raised in Jerusalem, and the Torah is his primary source of belief, teaching, and practice with full understanding of G-d’s covenant.
Paul could speak Hebrew and Greek fluently, and he aligned himself with the Sadducees. The Sadducees were politically linked with the Roman authorities, so it is possible that Paul may have been motivated more by politics than piety.
Christians have traditionally divided people into two camps, believers and non-believers, and the Jews have always been placed in the second group. Paul, however, reverses that ranking, with the Jews being first, as they have always been to G-d. They are like the olive tree, and we, as Gentile believers, have been grafted in. Grafted in but we pick and chose only the parts of Scripture we wish to follow. In the natural, we would never assume that the engrafted branch would overtake and replace the original tree. We have ignored Paul’s statement that we have been adopted into the family of G-d, rather than being original sons like the Israelites. We have changed the G-d given holidays to suet our purposes, and said they are for the Jews only, not the adopted ones.
Paul was writing his letters to with in the community of believers, proselytes that were coming out of cult practices. The Jews understood what he was saying, the proselytes needed much teaching. We get mix up because we don’t study the culture of the times, therefore taking it at face value can be misleading and doctrines have been made from it. Examples:
1. Rom. 10:4 where Paul states that Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. The Greek word tellos, which means goal or purpose, is the actual word used in this passage and unfortunately, has been translated as end. What he was trying to get across was the Messiah, was the completion, the culmination, of the Law, and the fulfillment of its final purpose of salvation for all mankind. Paul believed that G-d’s covenant with His people would never end, but rather that the promise of salvation and redemption was brought to completeness though the Messiah.
A careful reading of Paul reveals that he is not against the Law, but rather views it as the path to righteous living and the force that can transform one’s life. He teaches that the truly Spirit-filled life will result in moral and ethical behavior which will draw the world into a desire for the presence of G-d.
Paul taught that a true love for G-d changes the heart, producing a desire to please G-d by doing what pleases Him, namely obeying His precepts, which demonstrates G-d’s grace to the world through the believer.
2. Women’s role in Scripture. Acts 16:11-15 Paul is engaging women in conversation relating to interpretation of Scripture as well as the Messiah. The first woman in the NT to respond to Paul’s message is Lydia, a house-holder and merchant of purple. She was not a Jew, but is generally thought to be a G-d fear, who participated in both the reading of Scripture as well as prayers.
Phil. 4:1-3 the church in Philippi was thought to be founded by a woman, as co-founders and helpers of Paul. The leadership is definitely in the hands of women as he addressed three women leaders, Eudodia and Syntyche and their partner that is unnamed. In Myndos, a prominent woman named Theopempte is named on a fourth-fifth century inscription, as a ruler or arche of the Synagogue. Inscriptional proof shows the Christian women held the office of Elder. There are mentions of prophetesses, deaconess (Phebe) in Rom. 16:1, Apostle (Junia in Rom. 16:7), she was the wife of Andronicus, known as the golden mouth preacher. Acts 12:12-17 tells of Mary the mother of John Mark who presided over a house church. Others mention in Phil. 2: Col. 4:15; Acts 16:15.
In the NT records of Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, an educated woman who was a member of a Synagogue in Rome, who was skilled in the interpretation of the Law, that laid the foundation for her leadership. She is seen exercising this authority as an interpreter of the Law when she instructed Apollos, a silver-smith in Corinth. In Acts 18:18 she is mentioned before her husband, a situation in ancient literature that often shows a certain place of order. They organized and led a house church in Rom. 16:3-5.
There are records of Jewish women being members of the Jewish philosophical school in Alexandria.
3. 1 Cor. 14:34-35 Women be silent in church. This had to do with the culture and not actual Biblical Law. Paul seems to speak his opinion often as we see him differentiating between his opinion and the Commandments (1 Cor. 7:6, 12). In ancient times the women taught and received teaching in the household. The idea that women did not go to the seminars or men’s teaching sessions was not the issue, the main point was the in that culture the women was in the home while the men were in the Synagogues. Someone had to take care of the children, do the cooking and home duties. This is why Paul told the women, who obviously were not present during the teaching to be silent, and ask their husbands, who obviously had sat under the teaching for instruction. Women tend to chit chat well there is a meeting going on. By the third century there were active disputes as to why women should be removed from leadership and kept in their place. The book about it is called Didascalia that dealt with pastoral authority in discipline and they did not want the women responsible for this action. Because women were not exhibiting the appropriate characteristics of femaleness such as passivity, shyness, and restraint, they were often viewed with disdain and accused of being talkative, gossips, scolds, and lovers of controversy. Also because women were to show public display of their knowledge or authority it was believed that their public speech would be discredited. Besides a man would have a hard time lessoning to what she said, seeing only the sexual side of her.
Paul did not go along with this cultural belief of keeping the wife at home and not looking good in public, which always carried the possibility of other men hitting on her. This concept was later looked on as spiritual because of the three Roman concepts of humility, shame and chastity that carried a different idea than in the Scripture. To discourage women from the active visitation ministry they used such terms as wondering and running about to infer that women doing these things had their chastity in question. There was a result of boldness and shamelessness being associate with visitation. Therefore they could not entertain a position with G-d without degrading the prestige of her husband.
Paul sets out on his first missionary journey around 45 C.E. By the time he is beheaded in Rome around 64-65 C.E., his 35 year ministry has taken him all over the known world, either as a voyager or a prisoner, many times both. After the death of Paul, everyone based his opinion of Paul solely on his writings, without the additional necessary aspect of knowing Paul personally, or at least knowing first hand what he was dealing with in the early church. Therefore, we are indulging in a one sided theological debate-partial answers and no questions. We are basically reading someone else’s mail. We cannot presume to know what questions he was answering if we do not know the questions which produced both the questions and the answers.
Christians focus only on Paul’s mission to the gentiles and not recognizing his Jewish background that would explain his writings. He was to be the link between the two, not start a new religion – that was not his intention. There is no evidence anywhere in his writings that he departed from his Jewish convictions.
By rejecting Paul’s position as a Pharisee, the church has propagated an anti-Semitism that began soon after Paul’s death when Marcion reinterpreted Paul’s writings, removing any hint of a Jewish foundation. Marcion was declared a heretic in 144 C.E. but his influence has pervaded the church, giving rise to such accepted practices as teaching that the New Covenant surpasses the Old.
Because we do not see the whole picture, we miss the heart of G-d, which is to reach out ourselves to others. Through faith in G-d’s provision for our salvation, we can indeed move out beyond our flesh to the Sprit, and on out into a hurting world which needs the touch of G-d through our hands.